U.K. to Illegal Immigrants: Go Home Or Face Arrest

The British government has introduced a series of programs intended to reduce illegal immigration. One of them involves mobile billboards which are cruising around six London districts, telling illegals to “go home or face arrest.” They also give data on how many illegals have been apprehended in the neighborhood, and a number where illegals can get help in returning home:

This sort of measure exposes the divide in how people view illegal immigration. To most law-abiding citizens, it is nothing more than common sense: illegals, by definition, shouldn’t be here. They should either return home or be arrested. Most liberals, however, see it differently. To them, law are optional and can be ignored if you disagree with them. (The prevalence of this view explains why the Obama administration’s persistent lawlessness has caused so little political damage.) Liberals tend to denounce the kind of campaign the British government is now conducting as mean. One former Liberal Democrat minister called it “nothing less than straightforward intimidation.”

Still, reaction in Great Britain seems to have been mild. It seems that most Britons retain a relatively robust sense of their country’s sovereignty. It is hard to imagine the blow-back here in the U.S., should any unit of government deploy billboards like the ones in London.